DECISION POINT: In a $1/$2 cash game you’ve observed mostly loose, passive play with the exception of the player in the Big Blind who rarely makes a move without a big hand. Most stacks at the table are around $200 and you’ve built your stack up to $530. It folds to you in Middle Position with K♣T♣ and you raise the table standard $12. The Hijack and Button call, the Big Blind 3-bets to $50 and action is back on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a low stakes $1/$2 cash game. Most of the stacks are around $200 and we’ve managed to build our stack to $530 prior to this hand. We have observed mostly loose, passive play. The Big Blind has been especially tight, rarely reraising without a big hand. We are dealt K♣T♣ in MP2 and action folds to us.

KTs is definitely a part of our first-in opening hand range in middle position. In many low stakes games the standard raise size is often around 5BBs, and this game is no exception. We make the table standard raise of $12 and get called by the Hijack and the Button. The Big Blind then reraises to $50.

If the Hijack and Button had folded, and the Big Blind was a solid and aggressive player, our hand would make a good 3-bet defense candidate but only in a heads up scenario. However, in this situation we do have two additional callers giving the Big Blind great pot odds to just call and close the action preflop. Raising and re-opening the action often indicates a much more polarized range, as the Big Blind would happily take a flop with most speculative hands, leaving their big hands and some bluffs to balance out.

Additionally, we have a read on the Big Blind that they are very tight and have only seen them reraising with big hands. This makes it much less likely to be a polarized 3-betting range and more likely to indicate a top 3-5% hand that has us crushed. If the stacks were much deeper, we could potentially have the implied odds to try and play our hand speculatively and flop two-pair or better, or a draw of eight outs or more.

In this situation stacks are not sufficiently deep. If we are the only caller there will be $125 in the pot and effective stacks of $200 postflop. We wouldn’t be making enough money on average the times we do hit a big hand to justify the additional preflop investment.

While it can often feel frustrating to open hands and then fold to a 3-bet, in this situation the Big Blind is likely to have us dominated and continuing will likely yield a negative expectation in the long run.

Folding is the best play.